The shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse from Minneapolis, has left a lot of people shaken and angry. It happened on January 24, 2026, during protests against federal immigration enforcement actions in the city — the third such incident involving agents in just a few weeks.
Video clips that have spread quickly online show Pretti stepping in to help a woman who’d been pushed down into the snow by one of the agents. Things escalated fast: he got pepper-sprayed, tackled to the ground, and then shot multiple times. He was pronounced dead right there at the scene.
Pretti was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, worked caring for veterans at the VA hospital, and reportedly had a legal permit to carry a firearm. Some reports say he might have been disarmed by the agents before the shots were fired, but his family has pushed back hard against any suggestion that he was acting violently.
His father spoke out emotionally, saying: “He cared about people deeply. He was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset. He thought it was terrible, you know, kidnapping children, just grabbing people off the street.”
Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino came out strongly in defense of his agents during a CNN interview with Dana Bash. He called their actions “a good job” and said the agents’ training had prevented worse outcomes. He went further, claiming: “The suspect put himself in that situation. The victims are the Border Patrol agents there.”
When Bash brought up the videos seeming to show Pretti possibly disarmed and not posing an immediate threat, Bovino pushed back, saying no one could really know from freeze-frame images or photos. “Dana, you don’t know that he was unarmed. I don’t know that he was unarmed,” he said. “That is why we have investigators, that is why we have investigation that is going to answer these questions.”
His comments have sparked a ton of backlash online, with many feeling he was rushing to judge the incident while insisting an investigation was needed. President Trump commented cautiously to the Wall Street Journal, saying his administration was reviewing everything: “I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it. But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.”
Trump also announced he was sending border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota to help manage the situation and the ongoing protests. In a Truth Social post, he described Homan as “tough but fair” and said he’d report directly to him. He added that Congress and the Justice Department were looking into Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar amid the unrest.
The whole thing has ramped up calls for a full, independent federal probe as tensions keep rising over these enforcement operations and their impact on communities.